My First 1-Star Review!

As you may know, I left my old publisher. If you are aware of who that was, you may find this similar review on their google reviews. This, below, explains my decision to part ways from this company.

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Review:

I am posting this weeks after I left this place so that I could collect my thoughts. Before I go into detail on why this company deserves a 1-star, I must clarify that when I first came in contact with them, they were fantastic! They had ideals that I genuinely thought could change the industry of publishing. I joined as one of the first group of clients as a Straight-to-Publish (STP) author to a welcoming community that strived to support one another. Since then, I had published my book through them and even went on to join their unpaid administrative team. This review will have both my author and admin perspectives on this company, based on opinion and personal experiences, along with conversations with fellow authors and interns. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt, as I am no longer affiliated with this company.

Now for my 1-star review.

Author Perspective:

My book (a debut novel) was the first book to be published solely through them, and it was a disaster. Admittedly, I was the guinea pig, but from many other sources, I can attest I am not the only author disappointed with their quality of work. As for my book, the cover (done by my own graphic design artist) was a completely different color than I had originally submitted to them, they had cut off part of the art on the front, and completely messed up the back. The back was blurry, the barcode was very awry, and the blurb text was a completely different color than we’d agreed on. The inside format (done by SPH) was kerning (spacial issues in the text) and pages such as the Dedications page were formatted poorly. The overall quality looked nothing like you would see in your typical Barnes and Noble. It was not bookstore-quality.

This lands solely on them, because as the person responsible for distributing and publishing our books, they are also responsible for the quality.

I did not see my book until the day after it was released to the world! They DID NOT provide me a sample or author copy to assess before that publication date.

After drawing their attention to the endless mistakes on my cover and book, they essentially told me that that was how it would look, and proceeded no further—I cried over this.

This was the quality of my very first book, and I was heartbroken. Sadly, I am also not the only author who was heartbroken and sobbing over their shotty quality of work, but that is not my story to tell.

As for the marketing department, you might as well do it yourself, because it's what you’d be doing there, anyways. They provided very few marketing tips for what you paid for, and every piece of advice was essentially them teaching you how to do it yourself, never assisting you in the field. Marketing meetings, at least with my marketer, were cancelled last minute because they were “too tired” or “didn’t feel like it”. They also scrutinized authors from taking any breaks from social media or if they didn’t post to the marketer’s standards.

For what you pay in marketing, this should’ve never been a problem, as they should’ve been doing most of the marketing for you. On social media, they posted occasionally about your upcoming book to their few followers, but any posts about your book stopped once it was published.

As for the communication, that rapidly depleted. The once self-proclaimed “transparency” became a word they threw around carelessly. They became nearly impossible to reach, and when you did come to them with any issue or concern, they could not be trusted to handle it professionally (will explain further in the admin perspective). In the end, they proceeded to make very questionable business choices that personally affected the authors, and when brought to light, they discarded any concerns.

From an author perspective, I would take caution before signing here as an author. Since leaving, they have bashed my work on multiple platforms.

Since leaving, I have also felt a massive relief. I have since regained all my creative freedom back and am able to publish my book up to my (and bookstore) standards.

Admin Perspective:

I will start from the beginning of when I first noticed things were peculiar. It started with the contract change. Without going into further detail, in the middle of everyone’s contracts, they alerted on October 19th (or 18th) that they were going to be terminating all the author's existing contracts and forcing them to sign a new one by November 1st. In doing so, this new contract placed quotas on how many books an author sold (quotas that were far above industry standard for an indie author) and the royalties changed, to benefit the company. This was the first marking that raised red flags to me.

While being on the admin team, I witnessed (and sadly occasionally partook) in bashing other authors behind their backs in the admin-only slack channel. This channel included both CEO and COO of the company. They would screenshot private conversations (against their own NDA) of authors’ questions or concerns and pass it around the channel, in which the admins would then scrutinize said author. Comments made by the admin team on the daily throughout slack included very sexist biases and even scrutinized others with disabilities.

They would also partake in this type of behavior outside of their own company. When negative reviews would be posted online through facebook or even on Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware Twitter account (06/17/2023), they sent us to “defend their name”.

Their company grew too fast, and with it, they hired unpaid interns with the “intent to hire (pay)”. These said interns were promised help and a glimpse into the business, but instead, after talking to other people in the industry, they were not taught correct practices. Interns would be taken in and given multiple manuscripts at a time with very little guidance. They were admittedly “thrown to the wolves”.

They accepted nearly everyone, causing them to grow faster than they were able to manage. Along with it, they accepted nearly anyone who was willing to pay, even shooing those away that would decline the use of packages.

This growth caused a great demand in more unpaid interns, in whom they pawned all the graphic design, editing, and marketing work off to, which was probably for the best, because the CEO couldn’t edit properly and completely screwed up a fellow author’s whole book. Along with it, having a typo in the copyright page.

While working there, I witnessed multiple false advertisements and lies being told to clients, including sales measurements, and even witnessed how unprofessionally the contracts were written up. Without divulging further, I will overall say that their business practices were shady, as they did not have any qualified business professional on their team. Not to mention, many members on the admin team lacked any relevant experience.

As an admin intern, they never provided me with an internship contract or internship NDA contract to sign or even look over, and upon leaving, they decided to claim I deleted it (something I cannot physically do) instead of taking responsibility for their mishaps.

During my parting times, they had very little communication with me, making the transition to leave their company very hard. Other authors also report having issues leaving. Several times during my leaving emails, their team attempted to go back on the initial author contract they signed, attempting to withhold valuable amenities I got during my separation (including the returning of my rights that I am promised).

Overall, from viewing both internal business practices and client-perspective aspects, I would strictly pursue with caution. Their business model and practices are a clear sign that they are unsure what they are doing, and the way they handle business is unsafe, unprofessional, and irresponsible.